If I am popped the question, should Pakistan be accepted as a ‘normal’ nuclear country or does it need to be ‘mainstreamed’? My first reaction as a lay person, not initiated into the finer points of nuclear politics, would be what is a normal nuclear country? And why does Pakistan need such a certification and from whom? Like most fancy terms, this one has been coined in the US.

The authors of the term want Pakistan to accept certain pre­conditions to become what they call a ‘normal’ nuclear nation. What good it will do for my country, and why should it make me happy, will only be possible after one has examined the pre­conditions set for our country. The list of demands put up by Toby Dalton and Michael Krepon of the Stimson Center, Washington DC has five points1:

• Shift declaratory policy from “full spectrum” to “strategic deterrence”. (Meaning: give up the short range battlefield nuclear weapons i.e. Nasr).• Commit to a recessed deterrence posture and limit production of short­range delivery vehicles and tactical nuclear weapons. (Meaning: do not have a ready arsenal. De­mate all nuclear warheads from delivery means such as nuclear capable missiles and airplanes at all times).• Lift Pakistan’s veto on Fissile Material Cutoff Treaty (FMCT) negotiations and reduce or stop fissile material production. (Meaning: Sign the FMCT without demanding that the existing fissile material stocks be accounted for).• Separate civilian and military nuclear facilities. (Meaning: Bring all your nuclear reactors under IAEA safeguards).• Sign the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) without waiting for India. (Meaning: Unilaterally give up your right to test nuclear weapons).

These influential think tanks argue that none of these initiatives would erode Pakistan’s deterrence capability against India. This difficult decision once made, would make Pakistan kosher in the nuclear world, as defined by the ‘nuclear haves.’ The nuclear mainstreaming would ostensibly allow Pakistan to become a member of prestigious nuclear cartels such as the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG). This done, Pakistan’s ‘fast growing’ nuclear arsenal can be curtailed. It has also been suggested that not only would Pakistan be required to unilaterally sign the CTBT and the FMCT, they would have to give up terrorist groups that can ‘spark a war with India’ to become an acceptable nuclear state. This last condition seems to be added on the demand of the Indians, who leave no stone unturned to get Pakistan declared as a state that sponsors terrorism. Any honourable nation would consider the tone and tenor of these statements self­-righteous and malevolent.

A great debate has raged in the TV studios of the cable channels and the national media insinuating that these suggestions were timed to force a nuclear deal. The crescendo of the strident and acrimonious debate reached such a pitch that the foreign secretary was forced to state publicly that no deal was in the offing and that its tactical nuclear weapons (TNWs) were to deter a Cold Start offensive and not to begin a war. Some are of the view that the successful completion of the Joint Plan of Action (JPOC) with Iran has emboldened the US government to go for another deal that may add luster to the Obama legacy once he leaves the White House. Nuclear experts point out that mainstreaming Pakistan as a nuclear state is already on the cards and that it has been featured in the strategic dialogue between the two countries. In the Joint Statement made after the conclusion of the talks held between Pakistan and United States on security, strategic stability, and nonproliferation issues on 2 June 2015, mentioned that “both sides emphasized the desirability of continued outreach to integrate Pakistan into the international nonproliferation regime. Pakistan stressed the need for access to peaceful nuclear technology as a socioeconomic imperative.” Shorn of the nuclear speak, this means that the US wants Pakistan to become part of the nuclear order in order to give Pakistan a chance to access nuclear technology. Pakistan has been long campaigning for equal treatment in accessing civil nuclear technology.

Some are of the opinion that the US nuclear market is actually behind this move because they would like to make some money out of the nascent Pakistani civil nuclear market. Currently Pakistan’s sole nuclear reactors are the Chinese. Pakistan’s geo­strategic position is experiencing a paradigm shift with the growing warmth in Pak­-Russia relations and the plans of the multibillion dollar China-Pakistan Economic Corridor on the anvil.

Prima facie, the terms being offered to Pakistan to become an acceptable nuclear state seem harsh and unpleasant but on the flipside it signifies that the US is willing to engage with Pakistan. This may be the beginning and if Pakistan plays its cards well it can leverage its position as the only Muslim country possessing nuclear weapons. An access to civil nuclear technology could mean tiding over our yawning energy deficit. So instead of having our guards up, there is a need to put up counter demands that may eventually fetch us a better bargain in a fast changing regional and international milieu.

The author is a retired brigadier and is currently the Associate Dean of the Centre of International Peace & Stability (CIPS), National University of Sciences & Technology (NUST), Islamabad.

1http://www.stimson.org/images/uploads/research­pdfs/NormalNuclearPakistan.pdf, August 2015

Why peace, normality and the rule of law have been evading Karachi since mid ‘80s? How Pakistan’s commercial and financial hub became hostage to deadly criminal mafias and violent ethnic, sectarian and political groups over the past couple of decades? And what’s the reason that successive large and small-scale operations launched during this period failed to address the challenges of lawlessness, violence and rampant crime in the city?

These remain pertinent questions as paramilitary rangers have again geared up the Karachi Operation, targeting members of the outlawed terrorist groups and criminal mafias as well as suspected and convicted target killers, operating with the backing of their powerful political mentors.

The renewed vigour in Karachi Operation – launched in September 2013 – indeed brought a brief two-to three-day complete halt in politically and religiously motivated killings in mid-March. It also raised hopes among many dwellers of this restive port city that peace remains within the realm of possibility if the state institutions act without political considerations.

However, for skeptics the security forces scored such temporary victories a number of times in the past amidst similar media-hype and fanfare. But the powerful criminal-cum-political mafias and terrorists not just survived, they managed to bounce back with greater force after remaining on the ropes for some time.

Hardened criminals – involved in killings, extortion and land encroachment rackets – thrived under the umbrella of most mainstream political and religious parties operating in Karachi. The situation got messier when the banned organizations also went into the money-making ventures – from committing bank robberies to kidnapping for ransom – to sustain and finance terror activities.

According to a veteran police officer, who served in Karachi on several top positions, criminalization of politics and politicization of crime remain the unique phenomenon here since the late 1980s.

This nexus between crime and politics expanded and deepened with every passing day. Scratch the surface a little and one finds office bearers and stalwarts of this or that political party patronizing notorious killers and criminals in localities they dominate. A spike in politically-motivated killings is mostly the result of battles to expand or defend turfs by the competing parties – as it happened between the PPP and the MQM during their previous stint in power (2008-13). Even militants allegedly belonging to the ANP – which was also a partner in the Sindh coalition government with the PPP and the MQM at that time – were also involved in the bloodletting, violence and crime. Despite being allies, militants of these parties – supported by some first tier leaders – went for a tit-for-tat killing spree across the city. Extortionists allegedly belonging to these three and other political, religious and ethnic parties targeted small and large businesses, traders, industrialists and shopkeepers with impunity. Each political player extracted share from the booty according to its size and weight.

The unprecedented loot and plunder by major players forced shopkeepers and businesses to stage shutter down protests across the city as they demanded the government to protect their lives and businesses. But barring firefighting measures, the then government failed to take any comprehensive measures against criminals and terrorists because of political expediency.

The law and order situation deteriorated to an extent that the international media started dubbing Karachi among the most dangerous megacities of the world. Security concerns drove many business-people and industrialists out of the city. A number of major business and industrialist houses shifted operations to other parts of the country, while those who could afford located them abroad. The outflow of investments and closure of businesses proved a severe blow not just for the city, but the economy of the entire country.

In early September 2013, the newly elected government ordered operation in Karachi on growing public demand. Because of the popular pressure, all the major parties supported the move. However, blatant political interference in the police department and vested

interests drove the wind of the operation after the initial months of success. Political appointments forced good officers out of the top positions. Even the slot of the Station House Officers (SHO) remained up for grabs to the highest bidder. No wonder, during a visit to Karachi in February, Chief of Army Staff (COAS), General Raheel Sharif stressed the need to depoliticise the police force and called for an even-handed operation against terrorists and criminals regardless of their political, religious or sectarian affiliations.

As the operation got a fresh impetus in recent weeks, it is vital that authorities learn from the past experience. They need to initiate measures which can help consolidate gains made as a result of the paramilitary rangers-led crackdown. Any charter aimed at establishing peace in Karachi should include the immediate goal of breaking the nexus between crime, politics and religious extremism. For this, across the board crackdown on all those political, religious, sectarian, and nationalist forces remains a must which in any way patronize terrorism and crime. This process has already started. It is now necessary to keep reasserting the credibility and impartiality of the operation.

However in this age of 24/7 news channels, too much media-hype about initial successes can lead to unnecessary controversies. This needs to be avoided at every cost. Let facts speak for themselves. Let the justice take its due course. The sensational nature of most of our news channels has the potential of transforming even most serious and subtle developments into a farce. Along with an even-handed operation, authorities need to focus on mid-to-long-term reforms. This includes the foremost task of building capacity and ability of those institutions responsible for combating crime and dispensing justice.

The process should start with sweeping reforms in police force as underlined by the Army Chief. Karachi, and in fact the entire Sindh province needs a police force, which is free from political interference. The Police Order 2002 provides foundations to create a politically neutral, operationally autonomous, professionally efficient and accountable force.

But unfortunately, this system was compromised – especially after 2008. The 18th Constitutional Amendment further blunted the implementation of Police Order as each provincial government tried to enact laws to suit its interests rather than creating a professional, efficient and independent police force. The Sindh province proved the worst case as it altogether repealed the Police Order in 2011. Instead, the provincial government reintroduced the colonial-era laws governing the police.

There is a need to build pressure on the PPP-led Sindh government to reintroduce the Police Order 2002 if it is sincere in restoring peace in Karachi. Judicial reforms must also move in tandem with the police reforms. Increasing the number of courts and judges at every level remains the first step to ensure quick justice. Today, cases drag on from grandfather to grandson. This must change. Similarly, our judicial system must ensure that it remains affordable for the people belonging to the low income groups. The government also should take measures and enact laws to protect witnesses, prosecutors and judges. At the same time, more investment is needed to improve the quality and performance of prosecution.

The establishment of military courts has provided the much-needed space to the civilian government in which it can start initiating such reforms. There is also a need to improve quality of governance and efficiency on a war-footing in Sindh, particularly in the urban centres. Allocation of resources for the infrastructure and social development in Karachi should be part and parcel of this initiative.

A huge city like Karachi cannot be governed without an efficient and powerful local bodies system. But ironically, the ruling parties are trying to avoid the local elections not just in Sindh but also in Punjab under various pretexts despite repeated Supreme Court orders. Hopefully, in the coming months both provincial

governments will implement their constitutional obligation as per the court orders.

Karachi also desperately needs investment for infrastructure development, which has been on the backburner since 2008. It is ironic that a city of nearly 20 million people is without a modern mass transit system. The poor public transport system is the cause of major friction and discord in the city. Any peace package for Karachi must include provision for the establishment of modern metro and rapid bus systems. Social and economic uplift and development of slums and backward neighbourhoods – from Lyari to Orangi and Soharab Goth to Korangi – also remains vital to beat crime and terrorism.

Only a comprehensive package – involving both the crackdown on criminals, terrorists, and their patrons as well as institutional reforms and social and economic development – can help bring durable peace and establish the rule of law in Karachi.

The writer is an eminent journalist who regularly contributes for print and electronic media.

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Pakistan is facing four serious external challenges, which need to be addressed very carefully. Any approach to handle them must pass through two exacting crucibles – security and economic development.

The first challenge is our relations with India. Pakistan has been trying hard to start a dialogue process with India since the signing of the Simla Agreement, which essentially relegated the issue of Jammu and Kashmir to the bilateral plane. We insist that the issue is international in character on the basis of the UN Security Council resolutions on Jammu and Kashmir passed in the late 1940s and 1950s. India brushes them aside and wants to confine the issue to the bilateral realm and then snow it under a straggle of disparate agenda items. Besides, dating back to the 1990s, India has wrongfully but deliberately equated the struggle for freedom and self-determination in Jammu and Kashmir with terrorism. Political dissent, in any form, is terrorism in the Indian Occupied Kashmir. In the meantime, India has benefitted from our lukewarm and irresolute projection of the Kashmir issue at the international forums since 1972, though this too has, to their chagrin, helped to keep it alive up to this day.

India has a long-term policy on Kashmir and its relations with Pakistan. On Kashmir, it would delay any substantive engagement with Pakistan and in the meantime keep altering the ground realities in Kashmir to create conditions for the integration of the territory with India and to crush aspirations for liberty amongst the people of Jammu and Kashmir. After failing to subdue Pakistan post-1971, it decided to undermine Pakistan from within. Pakistan's nuclear capability has created a strategic parity with India. A war with a nuclear Pakistan would be fatal for India. Despite its some half-hearted, pious pronouncements made occasionally about Pakistan for political respectability, it has deployed its intelligence operatives to penetrate political parties in Pakistan, pit one political force against another, fuel tensions among state institutions, and plan, finance, abet and back subversion and terrorism on our soil. India is pursuing a constant war of attrition against Pakistan. In addition, it has made it a mission to isolate Pakistan internationally and demonize it as an irresponsible, extremist and insecure state. The fact that all this has not happened so far does not mean that India would stop trying, or Pakistan in any sense is invulnerable. Our policies towards India are value-driven, short-term and reactive; and hence a bit myopic. We oscillate between strategic machismo and fawning appeasement. This is not an adequate preparedness and response strategy. What we should understand is that, realistically speaking, India would not abandon its strategic designs vis-a-vis Pakistan. We should not count on India ever agreeing to normalize relations with Pakistan on the basis of sovereign equality and mutual respect and resolve outstanding disputes. This will have to wait. India is ready to shelve Kashmir and other divisive issues without any definitive solutions. The international community will continue to show understanding for the Indian stance and nudge Pakistan to move in the same direction.

Against this background, we should keep taking a firm stand on our principled position on Kashmir and other related issues. We must not allow the international dimension of our equation with India to go weak or vaporize. Pakistan is too big, too significant to assume a subservient role in Pax Indica, as per the Indira doctrine. For our part, there should be, therefore, no incremental capitulation on principles. We must remember that our time would come. Despite the stalemate we have with India, we should try to find solutions on water distribution issues. The levers of dialogue and engagement should be shifted to us. India right now makes us beg for talks that we know would yield no result and because India is not in a position to make any concessions. India's procrastination is part hubris part strategy. We should manoeuvre out of this rigmarole. Similarly, Pakistan should be in the position to deal with the periodic escalation in a manner that it does not spiral out of control. Pakistan's nuclear umbrella will not allow India to launch any ill-conceived conventional misadventure against us. But, in our interest, we should know when to lower the temperature. All state levers should be leveraged to counter India's sub-conventional, fourth generation warfare against Pakistan. In this context, the strengths of our media and civil society need to be consolidated and for that we have to rethink and finesse our current approach. We need a semblance of stability on our eastern border to maintain our security to keep developing economically. The best way to achieve our goals is to refine our defence capabilities to maintain their effectiveness and credibility, as well as to keep developing our economy until it reaches the top twenty bracket.

Afghanistan too poses vexing challenges for Pakistan. We should continue to invest in the peace and reconciliation in Afghanistan. The four-nation group has worked swiftly and made good progress by coming up with a roadmap. For the time being, this addresses one problem – that of mistrust between Afghanistan and Pakistan. But it does not bring a key interlocutor – Afghan Taliban – to the negotiating table. It would always be difficult to persuade them to forswear violence and pursue diplomacy. The trust between Afghan Government and Taliban is fragile and transient. President Ashraf Ghani is keen to move Afghanistan towards stability but there are political forces bigger than him that would be activated any time to undermine the process or strain relations with Pakistan. Afghan leaders quite often tend to speak testily to Pakistan like Americans and Indians are wont to do. Despite these risks, we should persevere in our present policy of promoting engagement, because this is the right thing to do, but not put ourselves in a position where we are blamed for its failure. Whoever becomes the next US President – a Republican or a Democrat – it is unlikely that the Administration would fund and beef up its military and security presence at the previous levels in Afghanistan barring a major catastrophe. It is probable that the US for all practical purposes may disengage and Afghanistan may plunge into yet another civil war. Pakistan should prepare for that scenario, even if it seems a bit hypothetical at the moment. Pakistan needs a strategy to deal with the likely fresh inflows of refugees and economic migrants and a spike in illicit economy. Pakistan should not ever overestimate its capacity to deal with such a scenario. On the contrary, Pakistan should always strive to keep the regional and international engagement on Afghanistan alive so as to hedge against possible, and obvious, risks. In the meantime, Pakistan should focus on getting maximum Afghan cooperation to manage and regulate porous Pakistan-Afghan border and strengthen strong economic linkages and stakes between the two countries.

It seems that the Middle East is imploding and this trend would continue for some time. The ultra-extremist, violent wave in the region and external interventions to fix its problems are exacerbating tensions. The order cobbled together last century in the Middle East is unravelling and crumbling. Pakistan has so far followed an astute policy of equidistance and impartiality. We should try to look at the region through the economic lens instead of religious or ideological prisms. The unity of the Ummah won't be achieved politically for the time being. It can, however, be fostered through economic interdependence. Pakistan has to take steps to keep it immune from the influence of Da'ish, which is a new fitna, and save its soil from a sectarian and denominational warfare, indigenously nurtured on externally sponsored.

Pakistan's relations with the US are back on track. The two countries are willing to expand their economic, trade and educational ties, and cooperate on Afghanistan and counter-terrorism. However, under strong Indian influence, Washington has been putting pressure on us to curb and curtail our nuclear programme, both qualitatively and quantitively. But this for sure is not going to happen. It is so queer that the US is more vocal than India on the lethality of the so called tactical nuclear weapons that Pakistan has developed for its self-defence. India is in fact quite blase and dismissive about them, because it knows the US is doing advocacy on its behalf effectively. It has been our constant, and legitimate, demand with the US and its allies to end nuclear discrimination against Pakistan and create space for Pakistan's relationship with the Nuclear Suppliers Group and other multilateral export control regimes. But we should not sound desperate for this because we have found alternate ways to meet our nuclear energy requirements. This effort of ours vis-a-vis international nuclear community may continue as a low key, while we should concentrate on other benefits that we can get from a stable relationship with the US. In our relations with the US, the nuclear track should be kept separate from our growing bilateral economic and defence ties.

I have highlighted four pressing challenges for Pakistan but the real strength in our policies would emerge from consolidation of our advantages by maintaining the robustness of our ties with China, implementing projects, in a timely manner, under the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), strategizing to attract investment for industrial development, and leveraging the strengths of our estimated 10-million strong diaspora community. It goes without saying that the home front is the most critical in expanding and raising the overall level of education, producing a new generation of corporate leaders, and reforming our governance structures to make them more productive, representative and responsive.

The writer is Director General, Institute of Strategic Studies Islamabad and a former Ambassador to the United Nations (in both New aand Geneva) and China.

India is pursuing a constant war of attrition against Pakistan. In addition, it has made it a mission to isolate Pakistan internationally and demonize it as a irresponsible, extremist and insecure state. The fact that all this has not happened so far does not mean that India would stop trying, or Pakistan in any sense is invulnerable.

*****

All state levers should be leveraged to counter India's sub-conventional, fourth generation warfare against Pakistan. In this context, the strengths of our media and civil society need to be consolidated and for that we have to rethink and finesse our current approach. We need a semblance of stability on our eastern border to maintain our security to keep developing economically. The best way to achieve our goals is to refine our defence capabilities to maintain their effectiveness and credibility, as well as to keep developing our economy until it reaches the top twenty bracket.